A Survival Strategy for the
Global Young
NOTE: This document was completed before I recognized the full significance of artificial intelligence (AI) for humankind's ecological survival. This recognition occurred in June, 2023. Once my understanding of this profoundly transformative technology is adequate, I will update the text as required.
My book Youth Ecological Revolution offers the global young theoretical and practical guidance to increase their chances of surviving the ecological crisis. In the following statement I use their collective voice to summarize my analysis and strategic advice.
Frank Rotering
March, 2023
We, the young people of the Global South and Global North, assert the following:
- The Earth is now undergoing rapid ecological collapse;
- Without an effective emergency response we will suffer intensely and perish well before our time;
- Despite their full knowledge of the environmental cataclysm, social rulers have refused to implement such a response;
- We have therefore been existentially betrayed.
This betrayal is an ethical obscenity:
a heinous act without parallel in human history.
We have concluded that, to minimize our suffering and maximize our survival chances, we must urgently:
- Replace social rulers with an ecologically responsible group;
- Cool the Earth using solar radiation management (SRM);
- Implement the rest of the rational crisis response;
- Replace ecocidal capitalism with a sustainable economic system.
To achieve this species redirection we desperately seek assistance from:
- THE MILITARY: Its professional responsibility is to safeguard the populace from existential threats. It is therefore duty-bound to replace today's genocidal rulers. We implore its members to quickly honor this core commitment.
- THE OLDER: As young people we have anger, energy, and a basic understanding of our collapsing world, but in general lack comprehensive knowledge, extensive experience, and authoritative social positions. We ask concerned older people who possess these indispensable assets to apply them to our survival struggle.
- INTELLECTUALS: The professional duty of society's thinkers and researchers is to "responsibly, accurately, and clearly inform the public" about scientific and social complexities.* We ask them to courageously fulfill this obligation by repudiating capitalism's disastrous falsehoods and developing the conceptual infrastructure for a sustainable society.
Briefly stated:
We, the global young, are existentially threatened by powerful social forces and their self-interested supporters.
We see no indication that this will change.
We have therefore concluded that we are
ecologically doomed unless we:
1. Seize control of our societies
2. Take rational action
These we vow to do -
for our own survival and well-being,
for the future of humankind,
and for the salvation of life on Earth.
* American Geophysical Union (AGU): Scientific Integrity and Professional Ethics, p. 5